Big, Bent Ears

Big, Bent Ears: a multimedia installation about listening

May 23, 2015 – February 7, 2016

IN 2014 ROCK FISH STEW began developing two separate documentary projects—one on the Big Ears Music Festival in Knoxville, Tennessee, and the other on legendary New Yorker magazine writer Joseph Mitchell, a native of Fairmont, N.C. Big Ears is a truly unique music festival, presenting music as diverse as minimalist pioneer Steve Reich, Radiohead’sJonny Greenwood, North Carolina’s own Rhiannon Giddens, and the deafening, face-melting rock group, Swans, set against the historic city of Knoxville at the foot of the Smoky Mountains.

Joseph Mitchell, meanwhile, was a devoted Brooks Brothers suit-and-fedora man. Between 1938 and 1965 he became one of the most influential writers in The New Yorker magazine’s history. Using fabled, lean prose, he chronicled the city’s fading neighborhoods, fish markets, overgrown cemeteries, and abandoned hotels, people and places bypassed by mainstream culture. In 1964, after the publication of his seminal work Joe Gould’s Secret, Mitchell stopped publishing. He reported to The New Yorker’s offices everyday without submitting another piece. Yet he kept wandering. Instead of chronicling voices, he collected abandoned objects—19th-century door knobs, scraps of housing trim, keys, and nails. In his small Manhattan apartment, he squirrelled away remnants from the world he’d written about, before it was gone.

Big, Bent Ears: an Installation in Documentary Uncertainty integrates video, photography, and audio from Big Ears, with a selection of objects collected by Mitchell. The exhibition asks whether the challenging sonic experiences available at Big Ears are analogous to Mitchell’s time-honored manner of venturing into neglected corners to listen to human voices and collect remnants of a disappearing world.

The Big, Bent Ears Kissa at CAM

Photo courtesy Ivan Weiss

It's a small bar, and there's the owner behind the counter, and behind him is his entire record collection, and it's usually a pretty big collection, and usually quite specific, and there's a really good sound system, and you pick a record, and he plays the record and everyone sits down and listens to it, and no one really talks, and it's one of the most beautiful things.

- SOUND ARTIST OREN AMBARCHI, DESCRIBING A JAPANESE KISSA

The Kissa is an integral part of Big, Bent Ears. Kissas originated in Japan in the 1950s. They were bars and cafes where music lovers could share their record collections with devoted and curious listeners. Jazz was the focus of the early kissas and they evolved over time to include other genres.

Loosely inspired by Japanese kissas, CAM's kissa — in the Media Lab of the museum — provides an intimate setting where music lovers can bring their collections, talk about them, and most importantly, share them with the community on a high quality vintage sound system.

The Kissa at CAM takes place every Thursday 8pm-10pm. CAM has invited the Big, Bent Ears curators, and artists, as well as a diverse range music lovers, musicians, artists and citizens to share their collections. Some evenings will be tightly curated, while others will be loose and casual. Pop-up kissa nights may happen on additional nights, too.

CAM’s educational and community programs are funded in part by the Goodnight Educational Foundation, The Grable Foundation, the William R. Kenan Jr Charitable Trust, the United Arts Council of Raleigh and Wake County. Family Sundaes are funded by the PNC Foundation. CAM’s Museum Access for Kids program is funded in part by a work contract with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Rock Fish Stew received funding for this project from the Reva and David Logan Foundation of Chicago and Visit Knoxville. Support provided by AC Entertainment, Big Ears Festival, and the Estate of Joseph and Therese Mitchell. Graphic design support provided by Natalie F. Smith.

Big, Bent Ears was also produced as an online collaboration with The Paris Review.